


made into a mark

by salvage



Series: you better make me [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Sleepy Cuddling, remix of my own work (is that tacky?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 13:02:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6908314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvage/pseuds/salvage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He stepped into the room and the door closed automatically behind him, locking them in together. Kylo wanted to touch Hux’s fine light hair and slightly parted pink lips and the sleep-deprivation bruises under his eyes. He wanted to become the vessel.</em>
</p><p> </p><p><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6410086">to your marrow</a> from Kylo's point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	made into a mark

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to Suzelle, who responded to the question of "is it tacky to remix your own fic" with "who cares? do it."
> 
> title from ["atlas"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8iAkk2W5GA) by lady lamb the beekeeper.

Kylo screamed as he destroyed his room. The crackling saber dragged through the metal and plastic of the wall, sliced easily through the mattress and metal frame of his low bed, then dragged again when its tip hit the floor. He raised it again, attacking the bed from the other side, feeling it catch on the wall and being hit with another wave of the acrid scent of melting plastic and hot metal. A wire in the wall sparked and shorted out. He split the bed in two and the pieces clattered to the floor. Not finished, he spun around and started on the small desk, kicking the chair aside, splitting the table through the middle and bisecting the legs as he brought the blade in a wide downward arc. The pieces clanged satisfyingly as they collapsed. He swept the blade up across the wall, hearing its crackle, smelling the destruction he wrought. Sparks flew. He let out a final scream, dragging the saber’s blade across the wall, the damaged muscles of his left shoulder and right upper arm burning in protest, then shut the saber off. 

The walls hissed. Some molten wires glowed briefly before extinguishing themselves. The room smelled awful. He caught his breath, head tilted down so his hair fell across his scarred face. The anger wasn’t working. He tried to bring up another surge of it—thinking of the scavenger girl, the traitor stormtrooper, the destroyed weapon—but when he thought about switching the lightsaber on again, hearing its familiar crackling hum, he just felt tired. 

_This is the final step_ , Snoke had said to him. _This will give you the strength you need to fully embrace the dark side._ But Kylo didn’t feel closer to the dark side. He just remembered his father’s face, his dry hand on Kylo’s damp cheek, the warmth of his body when Kylo held the saber to it and turned it on. 

The hilt of the saber clattered to the floor when Kylo’s grip on it loosened. He stumbled backward until his blindly reaching hand found the chair, the only piece of furniture left whole in the room, and he sat heavily, immediately resting his elbows on his knees and covering his face with his hands. The raised tissue of his new scar felt soft and foreign against his palm. _Weakness_ , he heard, the same insistent sibilant voice from his childhood, _weakness, weakness_ , and he wanted to scream “No!” and prove it wrong but it was right. The thought pressed against the backs of his eyes and raised bile in his throat. _Weakness._

“I’m not weak,” he said aloud to the destroyed room. His skin crawled with disgust at himself. “It’s not weakness.” His thick, unsteady voice didn’t sound convincing. 

For his whole life, Kylo had never needed anyone but Snoke: his only companion, the only person who wholly knew him and understood him. When he had been a child, feared by his mother, condescended to by his father, Snoke had seen his mind and told him that he was worth more than their narrow perceptions of him. The other children had teased him. Snoke had told him they were nothing compared to him. 

Still, though, sometimes Kylo’s mind got too loud for him to handle, and though he knew General Hux thought he was an overindulged child, a walking expense report barely worth the polish Hux used to buff Kylo’s fingerprints off his boots—still. He didn’t have to think when he was with Hux like that, his body a live wire alight with need, a piece of clay to be molded with blows. A vessel to hold whatever Hux would pour into him.

Kylo stood violently, the chair clattering back, and he scrubbed his hands over his face a final time before shaking his hair back and assuming his most neutral facial expression. He’d have to make a new mask. For now, the freshly bacta-healed scar, blotchy reddish-pink the last time he’d hazarded a glance at a mirror, proved an intimidating enough addition to his face that he suspected no one would bother him. (On pain of death he would never admit to liking the overall effect. He knew he’d always have to wear a mask regardless, having inherited his father’s wide, overly expressive mouth and having never learned how not to wear every emotion on his face, but it pleased him to know that he, like so many Sith, like Vader, now wore a battle scar.)

The hallways of the _Finalizer_ were subdued, the whole ship in a state of mourning, whether general, for their years of effort, or specific, for some coworker stationed on Starkiller who hadn’t escaped the planet’s collapse. It was hard to take. He spent a terrible moment envying them, the sad simple officers making so much of their Imperial parents’ Imperial dreams, mourning over a destroyed weapon. What do you know of mourning, he wanted to demand of the empty gray hallways soaked through with grief. What do you know of loss. 

Hux’s room was quiet, though he was definitely in there. Usually when Kylo reached out to his mind he sounded sure, thoughts neatly organized and arriving and departing in regimented little bursts. Now his thoughts were duller, muddled together, slurred and dragging.

Kylo knocked; Hux had lectured him, once, about using the Force to open doors and anyway, Kylo wasn’t that good at that, as likely to break the mechanism as he was to unlock it. The door opened. 

Apparently, Hux had always been able to control the door from his big officers’ communications display panel. He had just never chosen to do so before now. Kylo stared at him, again touching his mind and finding a disorganized monologue of exhaustion and frustration. Hux blinked but it took him too long to open his eyes, his pale eyelashes fluttering. Kylo’s self-loathing evaporated. 

He stepped into the room and the door closed automatically behind him, locking them in together. Kylo wanted to touch Hux’s fine light hair and slightly parted pink lips and the sleep-deprivation bruises under his eyes. He wanted to become the vessel. 

“I don’t,” Hux sighed. Something like panic rose abruptly in Kylo’s throat, followed closely by fury: How dare Hux? How dare he, when Kylo needed this? But Hux brought his hand over his own face, his fingertips rasping softly over a fine pale dusting of stubble, and Kylo reached out to him a third time to plunge into his thoughts like hands into risen dough and Kylo understood. He felt the time Hux spent on the bridge after Starkiller’s destruction, the painstaking hours upon hours he had devoted to contacting various officers to collect status reports and reviewing documents and briefings from all manner of members of the Order to try to keep his organization functional after such a monumental failure. 

Kylo had failed, too. But Kylo had gotten a chance to rest, after, had laid on his bed marinating in his own profound failure until he’d had to channel it into rage or else drown in despair. And Kylo was fairly sure Hux would never marinate.

Kylo crossed the room to Hux and knelt at his feet. He wasn’t the vessel but he was something else, still not himself burdened with his grief and doubt and weakness, and that was fine. It was hard to know what Hux liked, if Hux liked anything besides sowing bruises on Kylo’s body and Kylo messily bringing him to orgasm, so Kylo did what Kylo wanted. He pressed the side of his face to the inside of Hux’s thigh, holding Hux’s leg loosely just above the calf, feeling the warmth of his skin through the thick fine material of his uniform trousers. Hux didn’t object. Kylo turned his face fully toward the inside of Hux’s knee, bumping the nearly invisible seam with his nose, pressing his lips to the fabric that covered the thin skin and hard bone of Hux’s kneecap. He had never seen the skin, as they always kept as many barriers between them as possible, but he had always imagined it white as bone, perhaps scattered with pale freckles, overlaid with fine red-gold hair. Perhaps underlaid with the dendritic blue tracks of veins. Kylo wanted to see it.

He slid his hand down to Hux’s heel, holding the stiff leather of his boot and the soft swell of the top of his calf. He thought about his fingerprints on the leather. 

“Tell me to stop,” Kylo said, not daring to glance up at Hux’s face. Hux said nothing.

Kylo slid Hux’s boot off, curling his hand around Hux’s slim ankle. He mapped with his fingertips the hills and valleys of the small protruding bones and tendons, the rise of the muscle Hux’s calf. Hux’s body trembled slightly. Kylo held Hux’s foot with both hands and pressed his fingers up into the arch, feeling the tension of hours spent standing on the bridge, and Hux gasped, a sweet rewarding sound. Kylo suppressed the fierce desire to pull that noise out of Hux again and again, to lock his hands on Hux’s skin until Hux keened with longing for Kylo.

He moved to Hux’s other boot, sliding it off, mapping Hux’s calf and ankle and the slim arch of the sole of his foot. Hux did not gasp when Kylo pressed his fingers into the arch, his whole body tensing with the effort. That was fine. Kylo wasn’t done. 

Hux was covering his eyes with one pale hand, tension etched into the furrow of his brow and downturn of his lips. Kylo stood and leaned over him. 

“Tell me to stop,” Kylo breathed. Hux was silent. Kylo suppressed another little swell of frustration—he wanted Hux _so badly_ , why couldn’t Hux just acknowledge how much he wanted Kylo too—and circled his thumb and middle finger around Hux’s thin wrist, bare where his sleeve had pulled back just enough. Hux let him pull his hand away from his face. 

Hux’s eyes were a strange pale green-gray, framed by light eyelashes and dark bruises. He had maybe two days’ worth of stubble, barely noticeable unless the light caught the gold hairs in a certain way. His lips were a little dry, lined with faint white cracks. 

“Come on.” Kylo released Hux’s wrist, stepping away from the chair to let Hux stand. Please, he thought. Let this gentleness not be another failed experiment. Let at least this be easy for us. “Come on.” 

Hux stood painfully, swaying for a moment, and Kylo put out a hand to catch him if he fell but Hux straightened with effort. Kylo considered and quickly discarded the idea of bracing him with the Force; Hux had disdain for the Force, at best, and loathing for it, at worst, and if Kylo brought it into this fragile moment he was afraid it would shatter it. Kylo would not allow that. 

As Kylo had hoped, the fingerprint sensors weren’t activated on the inner doors within Hux’s quarters, so he was able to enter Hux’s bedroom by activating the panel. The door whirred open. Inside, Kylo accessed the environmental control panel, dimming the lights and raising the temperature manually because of course Hux had it set to automatically adjust to the First Order’s designated optimal temperature for human comfort and resource conservation (which was about five degrees colder than Kylo could ever stand being).

Hux crossed the threshold, looking a little dazed, and Kylo intercepted him in front of the bed. 

“Here,” Kylo said, to direct Hux’s attention, and Hux’s eyes focused on him. Kylo hesitated for only a moment before letting his hands rest on Hux’s chest, the thick material of his uniform jacket smooth and cool against the callused skin of Kylo’s fingertips. Hux’s chest trembled minutely under Kylo’s touch. Kylo took a brief moment to reach out to the fabric with the Force, tracing the tight weave of the threads, the small precise stitches at the seams, before sensing the slim metal fastenings of the hook and eye clasps that held it closed. He saw Hux’s hands on the collar, his chin tilted up, bringing the edges together until the clasps caught. With his own hands in the present he traced the movements in reverse, his fingers a little clumsy, the backs of his knuckles brushing the underside of Hux’s chin. Hux’s stubble was rough. The skin was warmed by blood close to the surface. Hux breathed in sharply when Kylo’s skin touched his. Kylo indulged himself, letting his forefinger drift across Hux’s skin, feeling the ridge of his throat and the sharp jut of his adam’s apple. When Kylo went back to his collar Hux sighed. A lovely sound. Kylo worked to strip him of his layers.

When Hux’s jacket hung open, Kylo eased his hands inside, feeling as much as seeing Hux’s full-body shudder as his touch drifted up Hux’s chest. Kylo slipped his fingertips under Hux’s jacket, palms flat, and he gently rolled Hux’s bony shoulders back until the jacket slipped from his body. Kylo let his hands trace down Hux’s biceps and elbows and forearms; the jacket collapsed with a soft rustle on the floor. Kylo couldn’t stop himself from grabbing Hux’s slim wrists, feeling the jutting bones and the flat inside, the strong lines of thin tendons. His hands wrapped all the way around Hux’s wrists, forefingers and thumb crossing over where he imagined he could feel the thread of Hux’s pulse through his thin shirtsleeve. 

Ren unclasped his grip from Hux’s wrists and brought his outstretched hands to Hux’s stomach instead. Hux’s muscles jumped and tensed. Kylo almost felt he could circle his hands all the way around Hux’s waist as he had with his wrists. He splayed his fingers and pushed, gently, and was rewarded by a small backward step; Hux’s foot caught in the folds of his jacket but Hux righted himself immediately, then took another step, carefully over the jacket, and then another until the tender insides of his knees collided with the edge of the bed. Hux stood there.

“Sit,” Kylo said. Hux did, and Kylo’s whole body felt warm with the way Hux immediately obeyed his command, however mild, however obvious it had been. 

“Hang that up,” Hux shot back, imperious as ever. His jacket. Of course. Kylo dropped to the floor, warmer still: the vessel now, filling up. He brushed wrinkles from the jacket, imaginary dust though Hux’s quarters were cleaner than any living space Kylo had ever seen in his life. He lavished care on it, examining it from all angles until satisfied it was pristine, and he carefully draped it over the back of a chair. 

Hux’s eyes had closed. He leaned back with both hands braced beside him on the bed, features slack with exhaustion. His skin looked delicate, nearly translucent, and the sleep-deprivation bruises under his eyes seemed darker when contrasted with his gold eyelashes. With a single command, this man had vaporized an uncountable number of life-forms, the magnitude of their screams as their lives ended tearing through the Force like a sonic boom, nearly knocking Kylo off his feet where he had stood at the window of the _Finalizer_ , watching the green afterimages of the violent red beams streak across the insides of his eyelids. Hux’s pale eyelids twitched. His pink lips were slightly parted. 

“Lie down,” Kylo said. Hux’s eyes opened. His irises were a delicate gray-green, barely ringed at all, the light color merging almost seamlessly into his bloodshot sclera. “Lie down.” 

Hux did, shuffling back on his elbows, swinging his legs up onto the bed. He was a sharp-edged, dark form against the pale sheets. Kylo wanted to delve his hands into Hux’s chest; he wanted to be caught in Hux’s ribcage; he wanted to be locked into the triangle of Hux’s bicep and forearm and torso. 

Kylo crawled onto the bed over Hux, ravenous for him. Once he was kneeling over Hux’s thighs he slid his hands up under Hux’s shirt, revealing the vast expanse of Hux’s fine pale skin. It was unmarked with scars or moles like Kylo’s was—instead smooth and pale, scattered with a few light freckles, highlighted by fine downy red-gold hair over his ridged sternum. It was warm, too. Hux shuddered, muscles tensing, goosebumps rising under Kylo’s palms. 

“Shh,” Kylo whispered. He braced one forearm beside Hux’s head and lowered himself over Hux so that he could just feel the warmth of Hux’s body where their chests skimmed together, his thighs spread wide over Hux’s, his hair tumbling forward as he bowed his head. His pulse thudded wildly as he pressed his face to the side of Hux’s throat. He thought _Please_ as he said “Shh” again, trying to silence any argument before it started, but Hux arched up toward Kylo, pressing them together. Kylo breathed out all at once, barely holding back a moan. His whole body was on fire. He was the wire, buzzing with electricity; he was hand-warmed clay; he was the vessel. 

Kylo kissed Hux’s neck, not even thinking, the tip of his nose dragging against Hux’s rough stubble. He kissed it again, moving to the soft underside of Hux’s chin, lips now rasping against stubble, then to the soft smooth base of Hux’s throat, the tender skin always hidden under his uniform collar. Hux tilted his head back, baring his neck for Kylo.

Kylo put both of his hands on Hux’s waist again, sliding them up and then around his back, hitching up his shirt, fingertips tracing over the subtle ridges of Hux’s ribs and the shifting peaks of his shoulderblades under his smooth skin. His hands firm on Hux’s back, he leaned away slightly.

“Sit up,” Kylo urged, lifting Hux’s body with gentle pressure. When Hux was off the bed, Kylo caught the folds of Hux’s shirt in his hands and tugged it up, over Hux’s head, and Hux lifted his arms obediently. The black shirt peeled away to reveal pale torso, tousled red hair, and long slim arms dusted with pale freckles and highlighted by red-gold hair. Kylo tossed the shirt away and Hux fell back as soon as Kylo’s hands let him, bright hair fanned across the pillow, blinking sleepily up at Kylo. Kylo suddenly couldn’t look at him, instead pulling his own tunic up over his head, catching his breath for the moment it covered his face. Then he pulled it off, his hair falling around his head in disarray, and dropped it to the floor. Hux’s eyes were still half-lidded, his full lips slightly parted, his hair fallen out of its usual gelled order. Kylo wanted to dissolve into him.

Hux lifted one hand to Kylo’s side, then, and tugged at the hem of his shirt. Cold panic washed over Kylo, bile rising in his throat. He saw Hux’s smooth pale skin and thought about his own, spotted with moles, marked with years upon years of failure: the twisted new lightsaber burns, fresh and pink, and all his older scars, fat white slugs crawling over his arms and torso.

“No.” All of Kylo’s scars seemed to itch at once. “I won’t—I can’t take it off.” 

“Fine.” Hux dropped his hand back to the bed.

“I, I’m sorry.” Kylo pressed his mouth to Hux’s throat again so he wouldn’t have to look at him. “I can’t,” he murmured against Hux’s collarbone. Please, he thought. Please. He kissed the dip between Hux’s collarbones, the rise and fall of his sternum, his pectoral muscle beside one nipple, the bump of one curving rib and then another. Hux was trembling now, delicately. Kylo kissed the sharp ridge of the bottom of his ribcage and then the steep slope of his stomach below it. Hux’s skin was so smooth and pale. Kylo opened his mouth against the soft convex dip of Hux’s stomach and Hux’s whole body twitched and tensed, the tremors getting more violent, Hux’s fingers twisting in the sheets. 

Kylo soothed Hux with his hands and then his body, leaning over him, imparting his weight and warmth. He touched Hux’s jutting ribs and the soft dip of his waist, his bony shoulders and the smooth curves of his arms. Hux’s breath seemed to catch in his throat. His eyebrows were drawn together, his jaw tight, and looking at his face seemed too intimate when Kylo could feel with his whole body Hux’s tremors and his shallow, uneven breaths. But when Kylo ducked his head toward Hux’s throat again, already addicted to the sweat-sweet taste of his thin skin and the rough scratch of his stubble, Hux rolled his head toward Kylo and opened his eyes. 

Stars glittered in Hux’s pale eyelashes. The pale green of his irises was half-drowned, too, the corners of his eyes just barely containing the sparkling well of tears. Kylo choked back the desperate noise that threatened to spill out of him and he leaned, very slowly, toward Hux. Hux closed his eyes. 

Kylo kissed his lips, very gently, just for a moment, just to see: to see if Hux would let him, to see if Kylo could have this without shattering every lightbulb in the room, without bursting into flames. Kylo drew back. Their mouths separated. Kylo was whole. He touched the side of Hux’s face with this same new gentleness, delicately tracing his fingertips over Hux’s cheekbone and into the very short even hairs of Hux’s sideburn. He brushed his thumb under Hux’s eyelashes but there was no wetness there. Hux was still trembling but he was contained. Kylo almost felt proud of him. Kylo wanted to kiss him again, now that he knew he could, and he leaned in, waiting for a cue. Hux tipped his chin up. They kissed again, Hux’s lips still and full and dry against Kylo’s, just slightly parted. 

“You should sleep,” Kylo said against Hux’s mouth. He kissed him again, too close not to, too drunk on the feeling to hold back. He felt Hux’s gentle warm breath as he exhaled. Reluctantly, he pulled away.

It was easy for Kylo to unfasten Hux’s trousers, the only part of Hux’s uniform Kylo had ever removed before. Kylo slipped his fingertips under the waistband and Hux lifted his hips so Kylo could pull them off, revealing the soft, clinging material of Hux’s underwear. When Kylo had more or less folded the trousers and tossed them aside he laid a hand on Hux’s thigh: the soft golden hairs, the paper-pale skin, the branching structures of blue underlying veins. 

Hux eventually shifted himself up, tugging at the sheets whose edges were for some reason folded under the bed, typically difficult and inaccessible. Kylo watched him, strangely enraptured with the way Hux’s slim limbs folded up and the unselfconscious way he rubbed his face against the pillow to get comfortable, disarraying his hair more, his fingers curling under his chin. 

Kylo stood abruptly, very aware of his heart pounding in his chest, and stepped away from the bed. His emotions felt very loud. When he looked away from Hux it was easier, but it was hard to do so, and even when Kylo did look away, Hux remained a bright impression behind his eyelids like the racing red beams of his dead weapon. Near the wall anyway, Kylo turned to the environmental control panel, adjusting the lights to three percent and then hovering there for another moment, fighting his better judgment. 

Finally, Kylo went back over to the bed, pulling back the sheets to slip underneath. It was useless to try to stay away.

“What are you doing?” Hux slurred, words indistinct with sleep.

“Shh.” Kylo hushed him as he arranged his limbs under the blankets.

“Are you still wearing your—” Kylo assumed the last word must have been “clothing,” but Hux seemed to actually fall asleep while criticizing Kylo. Typical. Hux’s lips were parted slightly, his hair falling across his forehead in pale strands in the near-darkness. 

Kylo stretched one hand over the chasm between them and caught a lock of Hux’s hair on the backs of his fingers, gently brushing it away from Hux’s face. Hux didn’t move, his features slack and peaceful. Kylo didn’t touch his skin but he could feel its warmth. He curled his hand beside Hux’s and closed his eyes though he wasn’t tired. Hux breathed softly and evenly. Kylo thought about Hux’s fingers, their slimness and their weight, how Kylo’s would spread to interlock with them. Kylo’s whole being was full of spaces for Hux to fill. Kylo was the vessel, full.


End file.
